Legal bid to re-open Manus centre rejected

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has rejected an application to restore basic services to the mothballed Manus Island detention centre but lawyers have vowed to appeal the decision.

Lawyers on behalf of Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani tried to have electricity, food, medical care and water at the decommissioned centre reinstated on human rights grounds.

But the application, which would also have blocked PNG officials from forcibly evicting men barricaded inside the complex, was quashed in Port Moresby yesterday.

Boochani said the decision meant there was no justice for refugees, who were used to court decisions going against them.

‘‘Depriving refugees from having access to basic and vital things is completely against humanity. This order shows how we are forgotten people and there is no justice for us,’’ he said.

‘‘While Australian and PNG judicial systems are not able to provide justice for us, I’m asking international courts to take action and protect us.’’

Refugees and asylum seekers had been pinning their hopes on the lastditch attempt to keep the centre open.

A week since the Manus Island compound was shut down to comply with a 2016 court ruling, almost 600 men remain barricaded inside the mothballed centre.

They are adamant it’s safer to remain than risk being attacked by locals at new accommodation sites near the main township of Lorengau.

An appeal may be lodged as early as today.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has urged the men to move.

‘‘There are alternative facilities available of a very high quality with food and all of the [other] facilities,’’ he said.

‘‘The residents at Manus, the RPC, they are being asked to move and they should move.’’

PNG Immigration Minister Petrus Thomas has also insisted it is no longer possible to restore services to the detention centre, urging its inhabitants to leave.

Thomas said it wasn’t simply a case of reconnecting the water or electricity at the facility, which was officially closed on Tuesday last week.

‘‘There is no service provider to deliver services and more significantly, as services are available at the new facilities, there is no need for services to be reconnected,’’ he said.

Amnesty International slammed the court ruling.

‘‘The decision is an abhorrent attack on the right to life,’’ spokeswoman Kate Schuetze said. –